Alma mater

Alma mater (Latin: alma "nourishing/kind", mater "mother"; pl. [rarely used] almae matres) is an allegorical Latin phrase for a university or college. It is used to refer to a school which an individual has attended.[1] In English, the phrase is variously translated as "nourishing mother," "nursing mother," or "fostering mother," suggesting that a school provides intellectual nourishment to its students.[2]

Before its modern usage, Alma mater was an honorific title in Latin for various mother goddesses, especially Ceres or Cybele,[3] and later in Catholicism for the Virgin Mary. The source of its current use is the motto Alma Mater Studiorum ("nurturing mother of studies") of the oldest university in the Western world in continuous operation: the University of Bologna, founded in 1088. It is related to the term alumnus, denoting a university graduate, and literally meaning a "nursling" or "one who is nourished."[4]

The term may also refer to a song or hymn associated with a school.[5]

Contents

Etymology1

Special usage2

Monuments3

Notes4

External links5

Etymology

John Legate's Alma Mater for Cambridge in 1600

Although alma (nourishing) was a common epithet for Ceres, Cybele, Venus, and other mother goddesses, it was not frequently used in conjunction with mater in classical Latin.[6] In the Oxford Latin Dictionary, the phrase is attributed to Lucretius' De rerum natura, where it is used as an epithet to describe an earth goddess:

After the fall of Rome, the term came into Christian liturgical usage in association with the Virgin Mary. "Alma Redemptoris Mater" is a well-known 11th century antiphon devoted to Mary.[6]

The earliest documented English use of the term to refer to a university is in 1600, when University of Cambridge printer John Legate began using an emblem for the university's press.[7][8] The device's first-known appearance is on the title-page of William Perkins' A Golden Chain, where the phrase Alma Mater Cantabrigia ("nourishing mother Cambridge") is inscribed on a pedestal bearing a nude, lactating woman wearing a mural crown.[9][10] In English etymological reference works, the first university-related usage is often cited in 1710, when an academic mother-figure is mentioned in a remembrance of Henry More by Richard Ward.[11][12]

Outside the United States, there is an Alma Mater sculpture on the steps of the monumental entrance to the Universidad de La Habana, in Havana, Cuba. The statue was cast in 1919 by Mario Korbel, with Feliciana Villalón Wilson as the inspiration for Alma Mater. It was installed in its current location in 1927 at the direction of architect Raul Otero.[14]

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